Free No Way Back: A Novel by Andrew Gross Page A

military to go up against the cartels. But money lures, especially in Mexico, and so they formed their own cartel killing and protecting the drug sellers, and El Pirate, he worked closely for Vicente Juarte’s cartel.”
    “How was your father involved?” Roxanne asked, her leg curled on the edge of the bed. “You always said he was a cook.”
    “He was.” Lauritzia nodded. “Maybe a long time ago. When I was young. Three years ago, El Pirate conducted a hit in the town of Culiacán, near where I am from. My father, who worked for him now, was charged with carrying it out. He had his own nephew, my cousin, who was just a boy, take charge of it, in which two American citizens, a husband and wife, were murdered in their car, and by accident—though there is no such thing as an accident in Sinaloa—three other Americans, college kids, who were caught in the crossfire. It was his big step up for my cousin Lupe. His first real charge. Maybe you heard of the case here. I think it was on the news for a while . . .”
    “I remember,” Harold said, leaning forward on the chair at Lauritzia’s desk. “I think they were there on spring break. One of them was even from Greenwich. Wasn’t someone charged in the crime?”
    “Sí.” Lauritzia nodded. “Cano. Cano was charged. Months later he was apprehended in the United States. But somehow the case against him was dropped. You tell me, how does that happen? An attack against your own citizens. He was simply deported and never put on trial. He went back to Mexico, where he still works as a killer for Vicente Juarte.
    “The government convinced my father that they would protect him. And us, his family. But when the trial was dropped, they blamed it on his testimony and did not follow through. They did not grant us asylum. Clearly he could no longer go back home. But Cano took revenge against him for his betrayal. One by one, he killed his children and nieces and nephews.”
    Roxanne felt a weight fall inside her as it grew clear exactly who Lauritzia meant. Her own brother and sisters. She looked anxiously to Harold.
    “First, they killed my brother, Eustavio,” Lauritzia said, “who was just a postal clerk in my village. They came and took him away as he was on his way to work, and they found him in a ditch a day later with burns all over his body and his genitals cut off.”
    “Oh, God . . .” Roxanne looked at her, a wave of sympathy rushing into her eyes.
    “Then my older sister. She worked in a beauty salon. She was beautiful and she was engaged to be married. They weren’t satisfied just with her. They came in and killed everyone in the salon. Twelve people. Innocent people. People who just worked there. Customers. They found Nina’s body with sixty bullet holes in it. No one was ever charged with the murder. No one, though they came in in the middle of the day and shot off over two hundred rounds.”
    “Lauritzia,” Roxanne said, reaching for her hand.
    “Then they killed my sister Maria, who was living with my cousins in Juárez. She’d been raped and all cut up—”
    “Lauritzia, you don’t have to go on,” Harold said, exhaling a grim breath.
    “Yes, yes, I have to go on. You should hear. This is the life we lead. This is what it is like for us there. My brother and sisters and I tried to come with my father when he was granted asylum in the States. But by that time, the trial against Cano had fallen apart and your government no longer had a need to accommodate him, so we were all denied. They said we had not proven that a threat existed directly against us, only against my father. Now they are all dead. All of them. My father could not even come back home to bury them.”
    “Oh, baby, I’m so sorry,” Roxanne said, and leaned forward to hug her. Lauritzia pulled back and shook her head.
    “Do you think it stopped there? No, it did not. It still goes on. These men, they are more vicious than animals. Animals would never stoop to do such